Defacing of Historical Statue During Australia’s Remembrance Day ‘Very Disappointing,’ Says Mayor

A statue of Lachlan Macquarie in Sydney's Windsor is seen defaced on April 25, 2023. Courtesy of Angels Florist/Facebook

A statue of a historical figure in Sydney’s northwest was defaced while Australians gathered to commemorate ANZAC Day.

The words, “Here stands a mass murderer who ordered genocide,” was spray painted onto the statue of Lachlan Macquarie, the fifth governor of New South Wales, at McQuade Park in Windsor.

Macquarie’s statue was doused in red paint and covered in handprints. On the ground next to the statue the words, “Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars” was also spray painted.

Local mayor, Sarah McMahon, said it would take weeks to remove the paint and the damaged parts of the statue would likely need replacing.

“It is very disappointing that on such a day of local and national significance here in Hawkesbury people believe that this is the day to send a message to the community in such a way,” McMahon told AAP.

“Vandalism and destruction of property has no place in the Hawkesbury let alone on an ANZAC Day when thousands of people had gathered at that specific place.

“I hope that the police do a thorough job in catching the perpetrator.”

A statue of Lachlan Macquarie in Sydney's Windsor is seen defaced on April 25, 2023. Courtesy of Angels Florist/Facebook

The vandalism upset local residents, who felt outraged that it was done on ANZAC Day, a day to commemorate and honour the work of Australian military personnel, past and present.

The ANZAC legend was forged during a doomed attack on the cliff-lined shores of Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I and has no connection to the governor.

New South Wales Police are investigating the incident, which is believed to have occurred during the nearby ANZAC dawn service or immediately after it concluded.

Not the First Time

The exact same statue was defaced previously in 2017 over the same claims.

In that same year, statues of Macquarie and Captain James Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park were also vandalised.

In 2022, the Cook statue would be again targeted this time amid the Black Lives Matter movement that swept the developed world and saw certain protestors deface and pull down historic monuments.

Red paint covers a vandalised statue of Captain James Cook at Catani Gardens in St Kilda in Melbourne, Australia, on Jan. 26, 2022. Diego Fedele/Getty Images

Cook was the British explorer who chartered the eastern coast of Australia and claimed the land for Great Britain in 1770.

Lachlan Macquarie’s Legacy Being Debated

Macquarie served as the governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821 and is known for his role in transitioning the state from a penal colony of the British Crown to a free settlement.

A central concern of Macquarie’s was public morality. Under his leadership, church-going was promoted, and cohabiting without marriage was denounced, which actually led to the marriage rate increasing.

Ex-convicts were also able to re-enter society if they demonstrated they had reformed their behaviour.

Macquarie encountered controversy during his tenure, however, when 14 Aboriginal men, women, and children were killed by soldiers during a military operation in 1816 under his direct orders.

Leading up to the operation, hostilities between Europeans and the Aboriginals had escalated, with a number of raids and attacks causing injuries and fatalities on both sides.

Macquarie had issued instructions to punish the guilty and leave the innocent, including explicit orders to offer Aboriginal groups an opportunity to surrender before opening fire, but the instructions seem to have been ignored.

An ABC fact check argues that while Macquarie was ultimately responsible for the actions of his soldiers, he could not be considered a “mass murderer” or that the incident was a genocide due to the complexity of the issue.

It was unlikely that Macquarie aimed to deliberately “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” which is the U.N. definition of genocide. However, if the same incident occurred today, it would be regarded as a war crime, the ABC added.

Meanwhile, the Australian Dictionary of Biography, published in 1967, described Macquarie’s policy for Aboriginal people as an “expression of the same humanitarian conscience.”

He had organised a school for Aboriginal children, an Aboriginal farm at George’s Head, and a “sort of annual durbar [public court] for them.”

“The results of this naive policy were not very encouraging and in 1816, when the natives showed signs of ungrateful hostility, he organised a military drive to chasten them. But no other governor since [Arthur] Phillip had shown them so much sympathy,” it said.